Bryan Erickson carries beer on his head for his job.
He's the guy with a cardboard box, weaving through the crowd during concerts at First Avenue. He opens beers, hands them to customers and makes change all with one hand while working his way across the dance floor and keeping an eye out for trouble and fallen Red Stripe bottles.
He's handed Ani DiFranco a Nordeast and earned $300 in tips at a Soul Asylum show. He's always watching the crowd, looking for the right time to make his move.
He spoke last week about some of the unusual customer service challenges the job presents and how he handles them.
Q: How do you refer to your job?
A: Technically it's called 'casing.' It is a case of beer. When they schedule me to do it, I'm going to be casing, that's how I refer to it. I'm told that it's been going on for about 25 years. I fell into it by happenstance.
Q: How long have you done the job?
A: I've been at First Avenue since May 2010. After about a year they said, "Hey he's tall, why not have him try carrying beer around?" I gave it a shot. The next day my boss came to me and said, "Did you like doing that?" Yeah, it was really fun. "Do you want to do it again?" Of course.
Q: What kind of beer do you sell?
A: These days I'm selling Nordeast, Miller Lite, Grain Belt Premium and water. The box has six of each product in it. I sell all my beers for $5 apiece and the waters are $3 apiece. I like to keep it simple. Imagine dealing in quarters out there.
Q: What's the bestselling beer?
A: The Nordeast sells incredibly well. That's just hometown love too.
Q: How do you make change? It seems like that would be hard with just one hand in the dark.
A: Halfway through that first shift, I ended up telling myself, hey this really isn't going to work with one big wad of money. A long time ago I saw a documentary that outlined a day in the life of an average blind person. This guy said he'd have a friend fold the bills in different directions so he could feel them in his pocket and be able to differentiate amongst the bills and be able to pay for things without having to see them. That's essentially what I have to do. I get five dollar bills and one dollar bills and I'll make a five count of five one-dollar bills and I'll fold that a certain way and put that in one pocket. The other pocket is my five-dollar bills and I'll fold that in a separate succession. It gets a little complex. All I can say is never mix your change with your incoming money, because it gets really hairy.
Q: So what people pay goes into another pocket?
A: Exactly. So I have a third pocket that is actually a cash pocket, and I have my other two completely separated. It makes it a lot easier. It takes a lot of planning, which is why I probably won't take a fifty from you in the crowd.
Q: Do you have to wear special pants?
A: Actually I do. I get made fun of a lot. Typically if you see me at work I will probably be wearing an old pair of JNCO jeans I bought at Goodwill for $10. Although they are incredibly stylish and they have a skull on them, mainly I wear them because they have exorbitantly large pockets. The other thing I wear is bib overalls.
Q: How much do you try to stay out of people's way?
A: I like to tell people that sociology is a big part of my job. You have to understand when you need to be there and when to not be there. I'm an obstruction. If I'm helpful and wanted, then absolutely, but I don't want to remove any of the magic or cause anybody to miss their favorite song because some guy didn't get his wallet out fast enough to pay the beer guy.
Q: Do you ever sell beer to the bands?
A: I gave Ani DiFranco a beer on stage, and she told a story about a beer, which was pretty funny. It was a Nordeast. It upped my beer sales pretty good too.
Q: What types of shows are the best for beer sales?
A: I find that a lot more blue grass, songs that have longer durations, typically have better sales. I love Umphrey's McGee, not only because they're awesome, but because they have really long songs. You're there for the experience of everything around you, and I can become a better part of that when the energy is more free-flowing. Moshpits are always fun. There's always the overly excited huggy, shirtless guy. You've got to make sure you make it up to the moshpits at least a couple times because they get hot and need water.
Q: How do you know when to wade in there, when not to?
A: You have to know when to start. Once it fills up to the point where the bars are getting full and the crowd is thickening up, then I look at the crowd from stage left and see how frequently people are actually drinking a beer. If I see a lot of it, then that's a fairly good sign that I should go out. If within 30 seconds I see one beer go up, then I'm not going to be as likely to go out. Mainly, the other thing to remember is people aren't here to see me. I typically try to wait until after a song to go out there.
Q: How tall are you?
A: I'm about 6'-1" and I've weighed around 160 pounds since high school. Carrying beer on your head burns a lot of calories. It's a very neck-intensive sort of job. Otherwise, I'm just a guy wandering around selling something that wants to sell itself. I like to smell good, because nobody wants to buy beers from a smelly beer guy.
Q: What's the most you've ever made in tips in a night?
A: The most that I've ever walked away with was $300 the night of Soul Asylum and the Meat Puppets a couple years ago. I sold that night over a thousand dollars of beer, and my fingernails were wrecked because I have to open them all. It's illegal for me to sell anyone a closed container of any sort of beverage.
Q: So, do you drink beer?
A: I don't drink, by the way, at all.
Adam Belz • 612-673-4405 Twitter: @adambelz
